“A Brit?” Rachel looked up, her curiosity piqued.
“No, no.” Sylvia put her files down and took a seat, inhaling deeply. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something, but before you write him off, promise you’ll hear me out.”
Rachel couldn’t wait for the other shoe to drop. What fabulously dysfunctional detail had Sylvia left out?
“He’s … Asian.”
“Oh God, Sylvia.” Rachel rolled her eyes, turning back to her computer screen.
“I knew you were going to react like this! Hear me out. This guy is the total package, I swear—”
“I’m sure,” Rachel said, dripping with sarcasm.
“He has the most seductive, slightly British accent. And he’s a terrific dresser. He had the most perfect jacket on today, rumpled in all the right places—”
“Not. Interested. Sylvia.”
“And he looks a bit like that Japanese actor from those Wong Kar-wai movies.”
“Is he Japanese or Chinese?”
“What does it matter? Every single time any Asian guy so much as looks in your direction, you give them the famous Rachel Chu Asian freeze-out and they wither away before you give them a chance.”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do! I’ve seen you do it so many times. Remember that guy we met at Yanira’s brunch last weekend?”
“I was perfectly nice to him.”
“You treated him as if he had ‘HERPES’ tattooed on his forehead. Honestly, you are the most self-loathing Asian I’ve ever met!”
“What do you mean? I’m not self-loathing at all. How about you? You’re the one who married the white guy.”
“Mark’s not white, he’s Jewish — that’s basically Asian! But that’s beside the point — at least I dated plenty of Asians in my time.”
“Well, so have I.”
“When have you actually ever dated an Asian?” Sylvia arched her eyebrows in surprise.
“Sylvia, you have no idea how many Asian guys I’ve been set up with over the years. Let’s see, there was the MIT quantum-physics geek who was more interested in having me as a twenty-four-hour on-call cleaning lady, the Taiwanese frat-boy jock with pecs bigger than my chest, the Harvard-MBA Chuppie[20] who was obsessed with Gordon Gekko. Should I go on?”
“I’m sure they weren’t as bad as you make it sound.”
“Well, it was bad enough for me to institute a ‘no Asian guys’ policy about five years ago,” Rachel insisted.
Sylvia sighed. “Let’s face it. The real reason you treat Asian men the way you do is because they represent the type of man your family wishes you would bring home, and you are simply rebelling by refusing to date one.”
“You are so far off base.” Rachel laughed, shaking her head.
“Either that, or growing up as a racial minority in America, you feel that the ultimate act of assimilation is to marry into the dominant race. Which is why you only ever date WASPs … or Eurotrash.”
“Have you ever been to Cupertino, where I spent all my teenage years? Because you would see that Asians are the dominant race in Cupertino. Stop projecting your own issues onto me.”
“Well, take my challenge and try to be color-blind just one more time.”
“Okay, I’ll prove you wrong. How would you like me to present myself to this Oxford Asian charmer?”
“You don’t have to. I already arranged for us to have coffee with him at La Lanterna after work,” Sylvia said gleefully.
By the time the gruff Estonian waitress at La Lanterna came to take Nicholas’s drink order, Sylvia was whispering angrily into Rachel’s ear, “Hey, are you mute or something? Enough with the Asian freeze-out!”
Rachel decided to play along and join in the conversation, but it soon became apparent to her that Nicholas had no idea that this was a set-up and, more disturbingly, seemed far more interested in her colleague. He was fascinated by Sylvia’s interdisciplinary background and peppered her with questions about how the economics department was organized. Sylvia basked in the glow of his attention, laughing coquettishly and twirling her hair with her fingers as they bantered. Rachel glared at him. Is this dude completely clueless? Doesn’t he notice Sylvia’s wedding ring?
It was only after twenty minutes that Rachel was able to step outside of her long-held prejudices and consider the situation at hand. It was true — in recent years, she hadn’t given Asian guys much of a chance. Her mother had even said, “Rachel, I know it’s hard for you to relate properly to Asian men, since you never knew your father.” Rachel found this sort of armchair analysis much too simplistic. If only it were that easy.
For Rachel, the problem began practically the day she hit puberty. She began to notice a phenomenon that occurred whenever an Asian of the opposite sex entered the room. The Asian male would be perfectly nice and normal to all the other girls, but special treatment would be reserved for her. First, there was the optical scan: the boy would assess her physical attributes in the most blatant way — quantifying every inch of her body by a completely different set of standards than he would use for non-Asian girls. How big were her eyes? Were they double-lidded naturally, or did she have that eyelid surgery? How light was her skin? How straight and glossy was her hair? Did she have good child-birthing hips? Did she have an accent? And how tall was she really, without heels on? (At five foot seven, Rachel was on the tall side, and Asian guys would sooner shoot themselves in the groin than date a taller girl.)
If she happened to pass this initial hurdle, the real test would begin. Her Asian girlfriends all knew this test. They called it the “SATs.” The Asian male would begin a not so covert interrogation focused on the Asian female’s social, academic, and talent aptitudes in order to determine whether she was possible “wife and bearer of my sons” material. This happened while the Asian male not so subtly flaunted his own SAT stats — how many generations his family had been in America; what kind of doctors his parents were; how many musical instruments he played; the number of tennis camps he went to; which Ivy League scholarships he turned down; what model BMW, Audi, or Lexus he drove; and the approximate number of years before he became (pick one) chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief technology officer, chief law partner, or chief surgeon.
Rachel had become so accustomed to enduring the SATs that its absence tonight was strangely disconcerting. This guy didn’t seem to have the same MO, and he wasn’t relentlessly dropping names. It was baffling, and she didn’t quite know how to deal with him. He was just enjoying his Irish coffee, soaking in the atmosphere, and being perfectly charming. Sitting in the enclosed garden lit by colorful, whimsically painted lampshades, Rachel gradually began to see, in a whole new light, the person her friend had been so eager for her to meet.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something curiously exotic about Nicholas Young. For starters, his slightly disheveled canvas jacket, white linen shirt, and faded black jeans were reminiscent of some adventurer just returned from mapping the Western Sahara. Then there was his self-deprecating wit, the sort that all those British-educated boys were so well known for. But underlying all this was a quiet masculinity and a relaxed ease that was proving to be infectious. Rachel found herself being pulled into his conversational orbit, and before she even realized it, they were yakking away like old friends.
At a certain point, Sylvia got up from the table and announced that it was high time she went home, before her husband starved to death. Rachel and Nick decided to stay for one more drink. Which led to another drink. Which led to dinner at the bistro around the corner. Which led to gelato in Father Demo Square. Which led to a walk through Washington Square Park (since Nick insisted on escorting her back to her faculty apartment). He’s the perfect gentleman, Rachel thought, as they strolled past the fountain and the blond-dreadlocked guitarist wailing a plaintive ballad.